Seattle can’t afford a new First Hill park so it’s planning to spend $1M to fix up the old First Hill Park

Seattle has money set aside to buy park land in the First Hill neighborhood. The First Hill neighborhood, however, doesn’t really have any park land for sale. The solution? Move $1 million $500,000 from the Seattle Park’s acquisition funding and invest it the neighborhood’s existing central green space — First Hill Park.

UPDATE: An additional $500,000 to complete the project will come from the Swedish Medical Centerpublic benefits package.

The Seattle City Council’s civic development committee will discuss the proposal Wednesday afternoon following years of community involvement to reshape the 0.2-acre city park adjacent Stimson-Green Mansion at Minor and University.

“First Hill Hub Urban Village was identified as a priority neighborhood for park acquisition in both the 2000 Pro Parks Levy and the 2008 Parks Levy. Because of scarce opportunities and high land costs, DPR has not been able to acquire a property in the First Hill neighborhood for a new neighborhood park,” the council bill summary reads. “Due to very high property values, we do not anticipate this changing in the foreseeable future.”

The proposed legislation would authorize moving $1 million into the “Opportunity Fund Category” and allowing Seattle Parks to deploy the cash for the First Hill Park upgrades. If approved, construction to add new pathways, gathering areas, lighting, benches, and play features would begin in 2019.

While the reallocation would mean no new public park space would be created in the neighborhood, officials point to “other public open space” being “developed in the First Hill neighborhood through other projects, including, for example, approximately 10,000 square feet of new open space included in the new private development at 8th and Columbia.”

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4 thoughts on “Seattle can’t afford a new First Hill park so it’s planning to spend $1M to fix up the old First Hill Park”

Does the new UUB (Union, University, Boylston) park figure into this in any way. Isn’t the park there part of Pavement to Parks and part of the public benefit of the 1320 University apartments going up?

On a side note, is the annoyance that they have parking on the new site, while (I believe) the Charbaneau and the Seneca both have plenty of empty parking spaces.

And I doubt that these changes will affect that. I am not familiar with this park, but I wonder if there is anything really wrong with it that these changes will actually fix. The Parks department seems to be very good at spending money and not getting much in the way of results.

$1m on a tiny little park like that? That figure seems rather high in terms of the use that park provides. All that money for benches, grass, and “play figures”….? No wonder my property taxes climbed 45% this year, the city literally throws our money on the street corner.

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